ICANN LA
I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Victor Pitts of Moniker for the Domain Masters radio show on Webmaster Radio again, and spoke on the ICANN meetings in Los Angeles with a recap.
DotEU…. At Cost???!?!?
Just saw a post about blacknight.ie offering .EU domain names at 5 euros per. Unless I am mistaken, that is at cost.
 This is noteworthy, as we certainly watch pricing trategy like this suceed in the US, so it will be good to see how such a pricing model will drive organic growth and adoption of the .EU namespace.
My co-worker is on “The Next Great American Band” tonight (Fri 10/19) on Fox (8pm)
Hi-
I am jazzed!Â
Joe Higgins, who many in the industry know from DomainFest, TRAFFIC, GeoDomainExpo, or Domain Roundtable conferences, is a friend and co-worker. The exciting news today is that his band “The Likes of You” made the list of ten finalist bands that will participate in a contest of elimination similar to the American Idol show.
I encourage readers of my blog to watch this show, and if you enjoy “The Likes of You”, spread awareness and vote for them.
http://tv.msn.com/tv/pics/band2?photoidx=4
www.myspace.com/likesofyou is their MySpace page.
Good Luck, Joe, and rock the stage!
-JÂ
.COM.AU, .NET.AU Geographical Names being released
 auDA is releasing a list of reserved geographical names on October 21st.
According to the 2005 ballot, the names registered in the first 5 days will cost $825 (AU$ inc. GST) plus registrar’s registration fee. After the 5 day period, names will be charged $21.45 (AU$ inc. GST) plus the registrar’s registration fee.
Single character domain allocation process
ICANN is establishing a forum on allocation methods for single character ([A-Z0-9]) second level registrations in the gTLDs.
There are 16 gTLDs that have single character registrations restricted, of which .COM, .NET, and .ORG have only six registrations within that predated the rule to establish the restriction (q.com – Qwest, x.com – Paypal, z.com – Nissan, i.net – Oxide, q.net – Q Networks, and x.org – X Windows open source).
 The net result of the current process could allow for a thundering herd of registrants clamoring for these domain registrations, or there could be an auction process introduced to accomodate the process, should there be a change from the status quo.
Three new TLDs in the Root: .KP, .ME, .RS
Please welcome North Korea (aka Korea, Democratic People’s Republic) (.KP), Montenegro (.ME), and Serbia (.RS) to the root zone.
Delegation was approved at the recent Special ICANN Board of Director meeting on September 11.
My compliments to Kim Davies and David Conrad at IANA on a smooth process from board approval to root addition.
It appears that the zones were added to the root, but the IANA whois does not yet list the administrative entities for these published yet.
.KP was delegated to “Korea Computer Center”.
.RS and .ME are going to be replacements for the former .YU namespace (formerly Yugoslavia – and YU left the ISO3166-1 list), with a 2-3 year responsible transition of that namespace as .YU is sunsetted. .RS is to be operated by the same adminstrator of the .YU ccTLD.
New TLDs – What’s Your Idea?
What are your ideas for new top level domains?
Because of my tenure in the namespace market, I have the privilege of being a person that folks trust for open feedback on their TLD applications for the upcoming rounds next year.
I’ve heard or seen over 50 different pitches or business concepts at this point for new TLDs.
Some are great and have a ton of commercial appeal, some are not bad in that there is a good premise behind what they provide as an experience for the end user, and some are not going to get over a thousand registrations in their lifetime (and they’re good with that).
Lots of duplications…  Of the over 50 that I have seen, there’s 1 that I have seen 4 separate potential applicants for, 2 that I have seen triples of, and 9 that I have seen duplicates of, and the rest are individual strings.
Great minds think alike, and I am certain I have not seen every application out there.
I know most every registry platform, the various providers who outsource these capabilities, and technical requirements for resolution and registration services, and also understand the registrar channel well, because I have operated registries and registrars.
If you are a person could benefit from a chat, I’ll put it out there that I am discretely reviewing these on a pro-bono basis, and am glad to offer any feedback privately.
